Profile

I grew up in a small town in Somerset (lots of fields, cows, sheep, etc). I enjoyed science lessons at school and in particular liked physics. During my A-levels I was keen to go to university and live in a big city and meet people from all over the world.

For my undergraduate degree I studied Physics with a Year Abroad at Imperial College London.

I loved the experience so stayed on to study for a PhD at Imperial, looking at how to make bendy electronics.

After that I worked at the University of Cambridge for a while, also on bendy electronics, then decided I wanted to do something different. I moved back to Imperial, and currently work in a group that engineers new ways to identify diseases and help the body heal itself.

In my spare time, I like making podcasts🎙.

Cells can feel what’s going on around them, and then change how they behave. They can change shape, they can change what type of cell they are, they can change which bits of their genetic code are turned on and off.

We do this because: 1) it’s super interesting – it helps us understand how life works, 2) if we understand it, then maybe we can control it to help us treat certain conditions or diseases.

Some tiny needles I made – a single strand of hair is about 10 x wider than this picture.

In my job I make tiny, tiny, beds of nails. Each spike is a thousand times smaller than the width of a hair and super sharp. I then work with biologists (I have to get their help for this bit!) and we put stem cells on top of the spikes.

Stem cells are a special kind of multi-purpose cell that can change to become many other kinds of cell. Some scientists want to use them to help the body repair itself, by getting them to change into new cells the body needs.

By putting stem cells on different kinds of spikes we’re trying to understand how the cell feels those spikes and then changes what’s going on inside it. We’ve still got lots to learn, but hopefully we’ll help increase science’s general knowledge about this all works.

I’m also involved in loads of other projects too, such as making sensors to detect diseases.

I work best when it’s quiet around me, so I go to work stupidly-early, arriving about 06:30. Most people rock-up around 09:30 – 10:00 and then stay later. I just love having quiet time to think/work.

I might analyse some data (i.e. look at lots of graphs and try and understand what they show). Sometimes I write computer code that automatically measures the size of cells from microscope photos. Plus I design new spikes and experiments.

I help supervise students with their projects. They email me for help, and we have meetings to talk about their results and we try and think of solutions to science problems they have.

Our whole team meets together lots as well to share what each other is doing. Everyone does so many different things, so I’m always learning something new about biology or medicine (I like this part of the job the best).

I travel home around 16:30 to avoid rush-hour and then usually work for a few more hours at home.

I like the flexibility – there aren’t many jobs where I’d be lucky enough to pick my own hours.